OCTOBER IN CHINA

We worked very hard in October.

We both got ourselves buried in a mountain of papers to correct
plus grades to record and other organizational things that needed to be done.
But, we still had to for some wonderful activities.

The following are some pictures from each of them:

SHANDONG UNIVERSITY
110TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

We are both teaching at Shandong University in Jinan, China,
but we teach on different campuses. Truman's campus in the newer one.
The birthday celebration was held in a new stadium, which was just completed this year.
The stage for the evening program was decorated magnificently.

The only thing wrong with the program was that it went w-a-a-a-y too long.
We left after 2 hours. It went for another 1 1/2 hours.

The girls in this photo with us are two of my class monitors. There role is like that of a class secretary and teacher's aid. They are both seniors. I have two Senior English Writing classes.
Sally, on my right, and Belinda, on Truman's left, are each a monitor in one of those classes.
They sat by us and told us what was going on, since the whole thing was in Chinese.

A NEW MALL IN JINAN

We belong to the Beijing Branch, which consists of members of the church who are living in China with foreign passports, called 'expatriates'.
However, we don't travel to Beijing on Sundays for church services. Instead, we call into Beijing through a SKYPE conference call.
Since we aren't a full branch, our group of members of the church in Jinan call themselves a 'Twig'. Included in that group are BYU China teachers and a few others who are under their own contracts to teach in China. Our group consists of 14 members. After our two hour block, we have a potluck luncheon together.

One night in October, we held a 'Twig' activity where we all met in one location, then, from that location, all hopped on a bus and rode it to a new mall in Jinan.
We had dinner together, shopped at a small grocery store that carries American food brand items, then went outside at dark to watch a 1/2 hour water show.

Truman and two other BYU teachers, Henry Miner and Kirby Jones, got a little silly in the small Halloween costumes and decorations bin in the grocery store.
It was a small bin, nothing like the aisles and aisles of Halloween stuff at WalMart.

ROMANTIC BOAT RIDE
The next week, after the new mall excursion, we went back to the same part of Jinan to take a cruise up the canal to Daming Lake. It was a cool, but not cold, autumn night.

Look closely at the picture. What you are seeing is a lighted bridge over the canal and its reflection on the water. We went under at least 10 bridges with different lighting displayed on each one.

This is a picture of the inside of the small boat we were on. In this picture are, starting with Henry then going clockwise, Henry Miner, Luci Jones, Kay Miner, and Susan Bishop.

Sorry, this picture is blurry, but it shows the beautiful reflections on the water.
Every building we passed had its own unique lighting display.

QUFU, HOME OF CONFUCIUS

A final activity for October was a trip to Qufu (pronounced choo-foo).
The estate and burial spot of Confucius are located in this small village. We had a 2 hour bus ride there and back to Jinan, but it was worth it.
There have been more than 80 generations since Confucius' time. One of the direct ancestors is a university student somewhere in China right now.

First picture shows an example of some of the architecture in the palatial gardens of the Confucius compound. The second picture is of the group we went with on this trip.There are only four of us who are BYU teachers and all from Utah. All the rest have come through other programs or came on their own. There is one from England, one from Spain, one from France, one from Russia, some from China, 3 from Japan, and there is one from the foreign country of California.

TRIP TO XI'AN

During a week-long Chinese holiday, we had the opportunity to fly to Xi'an (pronounced shee-ann) for a couple of days of sight-seeing. We met other of our BYU colleagues there who had been on a much longer portion of the trip that we weren't able to go on.

XI'AN, CHINA IS THE HOME OF THE

TERRACOTTA WARRIORS

We're standing on a side wall of Pit #1. If you have never heard the story behind these clay warriors, look it up on Wikipedia.
I'm not to take the space to explain it here. But, it truly is an amazing story and these are truly one of the 8 Wonders of the World.
There is a cute story behind this picture. The old part of the city of Xi'an is surrounded by a very long and wide brick wall. As we traveled part way around the wall, we looked down into a courtyard and spotted all these "mimes" dressed up like warriors. We hurried down a very long flight of stairs. Truman had me stand in front of this warrior and was gesturing that he should put his arm on my shoulder. After a minute of watching Truman's "song and dance", the soldier looked him in the eyes and said, in English, "You want me hug her?"

STREETS OF CHINA - Our neck of the woods"

We walk through this moped and bicycle parking lot everyday on our way to the bus stop to go to school, shopping, or to church.

Out for a Sunday stroll after listening to a session of conference on our computers I ran into one of my students.
He spends Sunday afternoon at the square by our university campus giving little children roller-blading lessons.

This is a test. Can anyone guess what this sign means?
I'll tell you the meaning in next week's post.

TIME MARCHES ON!

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I lasted posted. We've been so busy this month. Getting 14 classes between the two of us up and running has been a challenge. There are so many things that we had to do on our own, like making our own class lists, inputting names on a grade keeping program, taking pictures of close to 500 individual student photos, downloading those photos, printing them on our own printer, cutting them out with scissors - not a paper cutter, and then gluing them onto student ID cards.

Then, there were lesson plans to get ready, worksheets to copy or have copied on campus, papers to correct, more papers to correct, and more lessons plans to get ready. Add to this, grocery shopping by bus and taxi, buying essentials for an apt., cooking and cleaning, and getting sick for a week. We're having interesting experiences in China, some wonderful, some frightening, and some very frustrating, but we are extremely grateful for the opportunity to explore this fantastic country, meet some amazing people, and experience the Chinese culture. We feel very blessed to have been given this opportunity.

This is one of Truman's classes. Actually, it's one of his smaller classes. He has several that have more than 50 students in them. My classes average 32.
He teaches graduates whose English proficiency is much lower than my student's. They are trying to get accepted by universities outside of China to continue their education. Their English has to be on a certain level, so they are taking English as an elective to boost their skills. His students have majored in other area.
My students are all undergraduates with dual majors, English being one of their majors. My students have much better English skills than his do.

We do have some down time and enjoy just walking to the community square about a 1/3 mile from our apt. We love to watch the people.

It's so common to see men and women riding around on mopeds or electric or gas-powered bicycles with a small truck bed on the back. They pack the bed with all kinds of things that they take to the streets to sell. We've seen the beds piled so high that it's a wonder the tires can hold the weight of it all.

We had the privilege of being invited to a banquet hosted by the local People's Republic of China's government officials of Shandong Province. We were the invited guests of our waiban (liaison between the university and the gov't).
The banquet was held at a very magnificent hotel, This painting was on the wall in the lobby of the hotel. The waves reminded us of Tobago. The painting was so large and life-like that we could almost hear the roar of the ocean waves.

Well, that's enough for now. I've got lesson plans to get ready. But, soon I will post some pictures of our first sight-seeing trip to Xi'an, home of the Terra Cotta Warriors. I've got to figure out how to enlarge the pictures that I post.

SIGHTS OF JINAN

Bicyles, scooters, and pedestrians compete for space on the busy streets.
Jinan is a city of 6 million people. China's total population is 1.3 billion.

Toilet! and, yes, I have had to use one.
But, I'm quickly scouting out all the businesses in Jinan that have 'western toilets'.

At night, the streets of Jinan are lit up like NYC.
This giant electronic billboard reminds me of Times Square.
It's on the corner by the Catholic church pictured in my previous post.

WE'RE IN CHINA!

Yeah! We're finally in China. It was a very long flight here. Our total traveling time from the time we left St. George on the shuttle was 30 hours. We arrived at the Las Vegas airport a couple of hours earlier than we needed to because we wanted to have time to visit with my dad and mom. Then, we had a 5 hour lay-over in Los Angeles. Due to the difference in time, we left LA at 5:40 pm on Monday, Aug. 29th, then arrived in China at 10:40 am on Wed. Aug. 31st. China is 14 hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time.

We were met at the airport in Jinan by my supervisor, Karen (her English name), whose English is very good. I have a better pic of Karen that you will see in my next post. She brought Angelo and Roddy with her who helped with our luggage, drove us to our apt., and packed our luggage up the flight of stairs to our place.

For the next 6 hours Karen, Angelo, and Roddy took us to lunch at a very nice and very authentic Chinese restaurant not far from our apt., took us to my campus, and then took us to an internet cafe to print some documents from one of my emails that Iwas going to need later. By the way, when I said 'took', you need to understand that we walked to all of these places. My campus is a 20 minute walk from our apt.

At that point, Karen and Angelo left us with Roddy at the internet cafe. But, Angelo came back with his car to take us to the police station. Yes, we have already been in a Jinan police station, but only because it is a requirement that any expatriate (persons with foreign passports,) who are establishing a residence in China, register their address with the local police. Just a formality.

We were taken next to a Bank of China close to our apt. to open a bank account. By this time, I was feeling the effects of jet lag and needed to rest. It took Truman about 1 1/2 hours to get the account squared away. Thank goodness for Angelo, he was a very good interpreter. Finally, we were able to go back to our new home to settle in and rest. Actually, I wasn't feeling very good, so Truman did the settling in and I did the resting.

This is a picture of a Catholic church that is right next to my university campus. I'm standing in a large public square, my campus is to my left. Pictures of my campus and Truman's will be in a later post.

SAYING HELLO TO OUR GREAT-GRANDSON AND GOOD-BYE TO MY PARENTS

The day before we left St. George headed for China, our granddaughter Tai accommodated us being able to see and hold our first great-grandson by having him a week early. We had just enough time to hold him for 5 minutes each before we loaded up our 250 lbs of luggage and ourselves into the St. George Shuttle for our ride to the Las Vegas airport.

My dad and mom met us at the airport to say good-bye. They went to California right after we got back home from BYU and just got back to their home in Henderson just two days before we were leaving for China. We had about an hour's visit with them before we had to catch our flight.


My dad took this picture just before we headed for the security gates. Take a close look at the items in my hand. The large white object is a folder containing our boarding passes and our passports. Between the time this picture was taken and the time we arrived at the security gate, that precious little folder dropped off the luggage cart. When we started looking for our passports to go through security, we discovered that they were missing so Truman did an 800 meter dash retracing our steps in record time. I stayed at the security gate entrance and didn't stop praying until I saw him dashing back with it in his hands. We were very lucky that someone found them and turned them into lost and found immediately. I aged at least 10 years in 10 minutes that day.

CLASS IS IN SESSION

To get ready for our China adventure, we were required to attend some training at the BYU Kennedy Center. The training consisted of 10 hours of instruction for 10 days in two weeks. Our classes started at 8:00 AM and ended around 8:30 each day with 1 hour for lunch and 1 1/2 hours for dinner. LONG DAYS! Kirk and Midge Evans were our mentors in this program.

Kirk is pictured above with the Chinese gong he rang to signal the beginning of each class.
Below you can see our classroom at the Kennedy Center where we were packed in very cozily. There were 56 of us in this group, all preparing to go to different universities throughout mainland China.
In this picture with us are Donna and Roger McEvoy. Donna was a neighbor of ours when we lived in our first home in St. George in Morningside, She lived down the street from us. Her daughters and my daughters were, and are still, good friends. They are going to Xian, China.

The Adventure Begins

We left our home in St. George on Sunday, July 31st, after attending church to travel to Springville so we could begin our China Teachers Program training. My sister and her husband are graciously letting us stay in their home while we attend our first week of training. They were also our hosts when we attended the MTC 3 years ago prior to our mission in the West Indies.

Classes started this morning, Aug. 1st. We have classes from 8:00 AM - 8:30 PM with breaks for lunch and dinner. I'll tell more about the classes in another post because I'm exhausted. We had a real treat at a FHE tonight. A former student from Shandong Province who took English classes at a university in Beijing from teachers from BYU told us about her experience and what we might expect from our stay in China. She is studying for her Master's Degree at SCU in Los Angeles right now.

Going to bed - more later.